How Do You Build a Scientific Republican?

How Do You Build a Scientific Republican?

It’s widely known that Republicans, far more than Democrats, reject modern climate science. And more and more, it has become apparent that this is at least partly because Republicans have a deep distrust of scientists in general, or at least environmental scientists.

But there are many other causes for this rejection as well. These include Republicans’ strongly individualistic system of values—basically, a go-it-alone sense that government is the problem, and markets the solution—and even, perhaps, some aspects of their personalities or psychologies. This is something that I’ve argued in my new book.

There is also, of course, the huge role of Fox News in all of this: Watching it causes conservatives to have more false beliefs than they would otherwise, about issues like climate change. We’ve written about this extensively on DeSmogBlog; and I’ve highlighted a new video on the “Fox misinformation effect” here and below.

Such are some of the factors that seem to build an anti-science Republican; but now, researchers at George Mason, American University, and Yale have swooped in to ask the reverse question. Given that this is so, how do you make a pro-science one? Or in other words, what attributes or beliefs predict being an outlier Republican who actually believes that global warming is real and caused by humans?

The researchers call such Republicans “counter-normative.” That’s academic speak for “out in the cold” in their party right now.

So here’s what their study did. It sought to examine the factors—beliefs, traits, practices—that are correlated with being a Republican, but also accepting global warming. Quite a large number of traits were thrown into the analysis, ranging from individualism to religiosity to self-reported conservatism—each of them measured according to standard social scientific techniques. The researchers also took a close look at how much Republicans they trusted scientists on global warming.

Then, they put it all into a blender—sorry, a “regression” analysis—and found that the factors they’d highlighted, together, explained quite a lot of why Republicans do what they do (or don’t do what they don’t do). So which were the strongest ones?

First, and not surprisingly, individualism played a significant role in fueling climate denial. The same went for “information satisfaction”—the so-called “smart idiot” effect that I’ve written on a great deal. In other words, what the study found is that the more Republicans thought they knew everything they needed to know about global warming, the more they were climate deniers. (Check out the study if you want to delve into the statistics; there are also far more factors analyzed than I discuss here.)

These first two findings might be considered pretty dismaying. If more knowledge (or at least, more believing that you know something about the issue) predicts more Republican denial, that suggests that patiently explaining the issue will get you nowhere. Something similar might be said for individualism—this is a deep seated part of identity, highly emotional (“don’t tread on me!”), and also not particularly amenable to change.

But have hope: The study found that the strongest predictor in determining whether a Republican accepts global warming is whether he or she trusts in scientists, and whether he or she thinks they are in agreement about whether global warming is occurring. As the authors therefore conclude: “Science views thus may serve as a central pathway in the development of Republican climate opinions.”

This, to me, says a ton. Remember that over the past several decades, there has been an active smearing of the scientific community on this issue. Trust in scientists was clearly driven down among Republican by events like “ClimateGate,” and how they were seized upon; and doubt about a scientific consensus on global warming was deliberately and consciously sown.

In this context, the new data suggest that, had there not been such a concerted attempt to create doubt about global warming by conservative think tanks and their corporate sponsors—and, by Fox—we might never have had a problem. Perhaps Republican individualism, information satisfaction, and all the rest would have gone and found some other issue to attach themselves too.

So how do we change Republican science views? Well, unfortunately, it still isn’t going to be easy. The authors of the new study write, for instance, that “a communication plan based around a core message of scientific consensus would have broad applicability across political audience segments.” But it would also get attacked by conservative media, e.g., Fox, and the usual suspects in conservative think tanks and the climate denial blogosphere. And given the “smart idiot” problem, Republicans consuming these media would then reject the science, and feel sure of themselves.

The only solution, then, is to make organized climate denial simply beyond the pale. It has to be the case that taking such a stand is tantamount to asserting that smoking is completely safe, no big deal, go ahead and have two packs a day.

Will that happen? Someday, I think it will. But it is not like we have a lot of time on our hands.

For every Spencer, Lindzen, Curry, etc, there are at least 32 scientists who accept anthropogenically caused climate change.

Journalistic balance would be putting on a doubter on April 1st, and reputable scientists for every other day of the month.

* The 32:1 ratio comes from the survey that showed that about 97% of climate scientists accept that humans are causing climate change (most of the remaining 3% are undecided; the Spencers and Singers for hire are seriously outnumbered).

”Looking at the above [HadCRUT3], one can see no warming since 1997.”?

Here is the HadCRUT3v data that was used in the slide that Lindzen was referring to in his quote. Please show me where Lindzen is wrong and why you consider him a liar.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt

I am underwhelmed by your personal attacks and tactics of cutting off quotes that referrence a specific data set that Lindzen was addressing. I hope you can do better with the actual HadCRUT3 data Lindzen referred to, or you will look like a fool. I await your analysis.

Lindzen lied when one examines the entire quote of Lindzen and then puts it into context of the HadCRUT3v data that Lindzen refers to. Are you going to prove to me that Lindzen lied in this comment or not? Don’t be an evasive twit, either put up or shut up. Where is your scientific evidence or are you anti-science?

Windy, do you know anything about science and how it is conducted? I didn’t think so. Have you ever heard of “cherry picking”? It is one of the more common forms of scientific malfeasance aka dishonesty.

Lindzen did a double cherry pick. He cherry picked the HadCrut3 data because he knew that this data set showed less warming than the other accepted data sets. There is a very valid reason why HadCrut shows lower temperature increases. Do you know why? It is being partially compensated when HadCrut4 becomes easily available.

The cherry pick on a cherry pick is because he selected 1997 as his starting point knowing full well that if he went further back he would get a larger trend. You can go to Wood for Trees.com and show that if had had selected 1996 instead of 1997 he would have got a trend which was much larger than the trend starting in 1997. Note: you do get positive trends with HadCrut data starting with either 1997 or 1996 but the trend is much larger starting at 1996.

That is why he lied, he committed scientific malfeasance which no honest scientist should do. He is a dishonest fraud artist, just look at his presentations to various political groups.

Anyone who brings up the name of Lindzen as an honest scientist should know better (and probably does), that is why people like you are called deniers and liars.

on this thread that was conceived by climate scientists to test the IPCC climate models. It was published in the American Meteorological Society’s “2008 State Of The Climate”. The time frame they used for a falsification at the 95% level was ANY15 year period. I know the science and how the models are designed and I agree with the climate scientists that ran the tests that 15 years is a valid time frame to falsify IPCC models. Do you know the science? Do you have a different parameter of falsification to share?

Its also a common misconception that global warming refers to surface temperatures.

It does not.

When Lintzen says, look at this very minute tiny portion of a graph and says… see.. I can’t see anything. He hasn’t done anything of value. Its more like yelling “Squirrel!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBWrMQVsuak

Unlike Lintzen, a real scientist would say… Hmmm… “Where is all that heat I wonder?” (This isn’t a binary system after all. Lordy know what ‘on’ and ‘off’ would do to all those differential feedbacks.)

So.. where is heat stored I wonder? Oh… Thats right… in water. So if we’ve stopped heating up, so would oceans and ice melt, right?

Hmmm..

http://www.ec.gc.ca/adsc-cmda/default.asp?lang=En&n=77842065-1

Something doesn’t add up. How do you melt a polar cap without heat I wonder? MUSTBEGETTINGWARMER.

but you have illustrated by your simple minded responses that you know nothing about the data and its scientific application. You can’t even deal with the simple data from the HadCRUT3 data that shows that Lindzen’s statement was accurate. Instead of arguing against his statement with facts you misrepresented what he said by providing only 1/2 of his quote, the important part that addressed which data set he based his statement on. You would be laughed out of any science class with such weak minded silliness. I doubt you graduated high school. You’re no better than Republican deniers.

Please go to page S23 where you will be informed by climate scientists that, “The trend in the ENSO-related component for 1999–2008 is +0.08±0.07°C decade–1, fully accounting for the overall observed trend. The trend after removing ENSO (the “ENSO-adjusted” trend) is 0.00°±0.05°C decade–1, implying much greater disagreement with anticipated global temperature rise.”

So the consensus opinion of the AMS is that there was no warming from 1999 to 2008. If you disagree with the AMS scientists explain why.

So next the scientists say, “We can place this apparent lack of warming in the context of natural climate fluctuations other than ENSO using twenty-first century simulations with the HadCM3 climate model (Gordon et al. 2000), which is typical of those used in the recent IPCC report (AR4; Solomon et al. 2007). Ensembles with different modifications to the physical parameters of the model (within known uncertainties) (Collins et al. 2006) re performed for several of the IPCCSRES emissions scenarios (Solomon et al. 2007). Ten of these simulations have a steady long-term rate of warming between 0.15° and 0.25ºC decade–1, close to the expected rate of 0.2ºC decade–1. ENSO-adjusted warming in the
three surface temperature datasets over the last 2–25 yr continually lies within the 90% range of all similar-length ENSO-adjusted temperature changes in these simulations (Fig. .8b). Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability.”

So for the pro-science types again we learn here that a lack of .2 degC/decade of temperature increase falsifies the IPCC climate models at the 90% level but that the models are still within the parameter of natural variability designed into the models. Again if you disagree with the scientific findings state YOURscientific rebuttal.

Then the scientists say, “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of
this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”

Again for the pro-science types any lack of warming of .3 degC rise in temperature over a 15 year period would signal a divergence between IPCC climate models and measured reality that would confirm climate model falsification at the 95% level. If you disagree with the scientists, please state your scientific rebuttal. Now given that I have provided a methodology conceived by scientists and published in an AMS document, please examine this 15 year trend of HadCRUT3V (this is the same data used by these scientists in determining the zero trend earlier in this post) global temperature data from the beginning of March 1997 to the end of February 2012.

Please show me if you can find a .3degreeC temperature increase. Now let’s revisit:

4) Climate change is happening, it’s probably due to human activity, but it’s not going to be as bad as the computer models suggest.

It is not a matter of if it is going to be as bad as the computer models suggest, it is a scientific matter of if the computer models are falsified at the 95% level. That is how science is distinguished from BS. Unless one is anti-science one has to accept that if the IPCC climate models are falsified at the 95% level, then any future projections can’t be trusted. To continue to believe something that is scientifically and mathematically falsified, would be akin to belief in fairies and goblins.

Windy, best keep yourself apprised of ongoing developments in the scientific world, otherwise you’ll earn the same respect as any flat-earther floundering about in today’s modern society.

Highlights

Temperatures:

“The decade 2001-2010 was the warmest since records began in 1850, with global land and sea surface temperatures estimated at 0.46°C above the long-term average (1961-1990) of 14.0°C. Nine of these years were among the ten warmest on record. The warmest year on record was 2010, closely followed by 2005, with a mean temperature estimated at 0.53°C above the long-term average. It was the warmest decade ever recorded for global land surface, sea surface and for every continent.

Most parts of Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Asia and northern Africa recorded temperatures for the decade between 1°C and 3°C above the 1961-1990 average.

Nearly 90% of the countries involved in the assessment experienced their warmest decade on record.

The global temperature increase rate has been “remarkable” during the previous four decades, according to the preliminary summary. The global temperature has increased since 1971 at an average estimated rate of 0.166°C per decade compared to the average rate of 0.06 °C per decade computed over the full period 1881-2010.”

Precipitation

“Global precipitation (rain, snow etc) over land in 2001-2010 was the second highest average after 1951-60 since 1901. Within this global average, there were big regional and annual differences.

Large parts of the Northern Hemisphere recorded wetter-than-average conditions during the decade, especially the eastern United States of America, northern and eastern Canada, and many parts of Europe and central Asia. South America, including Colombia, parts of northern and southern Brazil, Uruguay and northeastern Argentina experienced wetter-than-average conditions, as did most parts of South Africa, Indonesia and northern Australia.

In contrast, other regions experienced, on average, below normal precipitation. The western United States, southwestern Canada, Alaska, most parts of southern and western Europe, most parts of southern Asia, central Africa, central South America, and eastern and southeastern Australia were the most affected.”

Extreme Events

“Numerous weather and climate extremes affected almost every part of the globe with flooding, droughts, cyclones, heat waves, and cold waves. Two exceptional heat waves hit Europe and Russia during summer 2003 and 2010 respectively with disastrous impacts and thousands of deaths and outbreaks of prolonged bush fires.

Flooding was the most reported extreme event during the decade with many parts of the world affected. Historical widespread and prolonged flooding affected Eastern Europe in 2001 and 2005, Africa in 2008, Asia (in particular Pakistan) in 2010 and India in 2005, and Australia in 2010.

A large number of countries reported extreme drought conditions, including Australia, eastern Africa, the Amazonia region and the western United States. Humanitarian consequences were significant in eastern Africa during the first half of the decade, with widespread shortage of food and loss of lives and livestock.

Forty-eight out of 102 countries (47 per cent) reported that their highest national maximum temperature was recorded in 2001-2010, compared to 20 per cent for 1991-2000 and around 10 per cent for the earlier decades.”

Sea Ice

“The decline in the Arctic sea-ice, observed since the end of the 1960s, continued throughout 2001-2010. A historical low Arctic sea-ice extent at the melting period in September was recorded in 2007.

Arctic sea ice extent was again well below average in 2011. The seasonal minimum, reached on 9 September, was 4.33 million square kilometres (35% below the 1979-2000 average) according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. This was the second-lowest seasonal minimum on record, 0.16 million square kilometres above the record low set in 2007. Sea ice volume was even further below average and was estimated at a new record low of 4200 cubic kilometres, surpassing the record of 4580 cubic kilometres set in 2010.

Satellites have shown the fluctuation in sea ice from year to year since 1972. According to scientific measurements, both the thickness and sea ice extent in the Arctic have shown a marked decline over the past 35 years. Data indicate, however, an even more dramatic reduction in Arctic sea ice cover in recent years. The last six years of the decade (2005 to 2010) recorded the lowest five September extents, with 2007 recording the record minimum extent with 4.28 million km2, 39 % below the 1979-2000 reference period.”

The WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2011 – which we earlier cited & attributed at http://www.desmogblog.com/how-do-you-build-scientific-republican#comment-726557 – is chock full of attributions, not least of which are Hadley Center/CRU, NCDC-NOAA, &NASAGISS, for the scientific measurements & data that are well-supported by years of peer-review research.

Had you surmounted your flat-earther anti-science denial to read the report, you’d’ve seen all that for yourself. However, it’s pretty clear that neither technical comprehension nor honest discourse are among your strong suits, to be kind.

The three temperature datasets used in this publication are:

• The HadCRUT3 dataset, developed by the Hadley Centre at the UK Meteorological Office and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

• A dataset produced by the National Climatic Data Center (United States), using land surface temperature data from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and version 3b of the Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) dataset.

• The GISTEMP analysis produced by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States.

Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia (temperature, precipitation, circulation indices): www.cru.uea.ac.uk

The subregions used in this publication are those defined in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. Their boundaries can be seen in various figures of the IPCC report at: www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/384.htm.

The last time I asked you for scientific papers you produced pure drivel.

You found a blog complaining that billion year old temperatures couldn’t be driven by our current climate models. (Seriously… that’s conclusive to you. Hmm… not very bright if you ask me.)

Then you found another paper which.. reviewed web pages? (First hint… reviewing web pages isn’t science.) And what else did it offer? Oh that’s right a re-derivation of Kepler’s work. While the math might seem important to you. (‘cause you don’t know anything.) Its old. Very old. Its look it up and stop talking about it old. Its 400 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler

What will you produce next? A review of the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica? Details on how that is wrong?

Windy is not even anti-science since it takes just a little bit of neuronal activity to earn that reputation. He is a mindless cut and paster of anything some denier blog has pointed him to. His nonsense about the supposed lack of warming since 1998 is easily debunked in a number of ways.

Firstly, you cannot make such pronouncements from such a short time scale. What is the p value of the “zero” trend you spout Windy? Do you even know what p value is and what it means? I very much doubt that.

Secondly, a recent paper by Foster and Rahmstorf (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022) is described at open Mind (http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/#more-4517):

“The paper studies the five most often-used global temperature records. Three of them are surface temperature estimates, from NASAGISS, HadCRU, and NCDC, the other two are satellite-based lower-atmosphere estimates from RSS and UAH. These are compared to three factors which are known to affect climate: the el Nino southern oscillation, atmospheric aerosols (mostly from volcanic eruptions), and variations in the output of the sun. The time span studied was from January 1979 through December 2010, for which all five data sets have complete coverage.” This paper shows that once natural variations are removed there is still a pronounced warming which must be accounted for by increased greenhouse effect.

Thirdly, the AMS paper cited and quoted by Windy makes the following conclusion:

“These results show that climate models possess internal mechanisms of variability capable of reproducing the current slowdown in global temperature rise. Other factors, such as data biases and the effect of the solar cycle (Haigh 2003), may also have contributed, although these results show that it is not essential to invoke these explanations. The simulations also produce an average increase of 2.0°C in twenty-first century global temperature, demonstrating that recent observational trends are not sufficient to discount predictions of substantial climate change and its significant and widespread impacts. Given the likelihood that internal variability contributed to the slowing of global temperature rise in the last decade, we expect that warming will resume in the next few years, consistent with predictions from near-term climate forecasts (Smith et al. 2007; Haines et al. 2009). Improvements in such forecasts will give greater forewarning of future instances of temporary slowing and acceleration of global temperature rise, as predicted to occur in IPCCAR4 projections (Easterling and Wehner 2009).”

Fourthly, the heat content of the oceans has continued to increase, even from 1998, which shows that global warming has not slowed down at all.

As I said above Windy isn’t even anti-science but just a dumb denier clown who cuts and pastes things which he doesn’t have a clue about.

Again, this is another common misconception that can easily fool people. Meteorologists don’t study or analyze the environment. Its not their job.

What do they know?

Most meteorologists are BSC who do nothing but read out what their met techs tell them. Right? Not a lot of science there right? Even if they did, the best they could hope for is a single graph representing their small portion of the world.

“In all our stories, especially matters of controversy, we strive to consider the strongest arguments we can find on all sides, seeking to deliver both nuance and clarity. Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.

At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly.”

http://ethics.npr.org/

“With these words, NPR commits itself as an organization to avoid the worst excesses of “he said, she said” journalism. It says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report. It introduces a new and potentially powerful concept of fairness: being “fair to the truth,” which as we know is not always evenly distributed among the sides in a public dispute.

Maintaining the “appearance of balance” isn’t good enough, NPR says. “If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side…” we have to say so.”

WMO: “This 2011 annual assessment confirms the findings of the previous WMO annual statements that climate change is happening now and is not some distant future threat. The world is warming because of human activities and this is resulting in far-reaching and potentially irreversible impacts on our Earth, atmosphere and oceans,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

Ianvs, that certainly seems to silence them most of the time,butregarding this:

“They may never get it” . I don’t believe most deniers want to get it, or ever intend to “get it”. Skeptics, sure, but deniers such as many of us have seen across the blogosphere and in people like Windy, Lara, Chas and Hank are approaching this from an entirely political point of view and believe they are defending an attack on their political group they support.

When proven wrong, they simply move onto the next illogical claim as if nothing ever happened. The backfire effect takes effect and they limp off back to right wing blogs to reinforce their confirmation bias and re-energize, ready to dutifully fight off the perceived world wide orchestrated hoax designed soley to attack their party and form a one world government commanded by a socialist or communist overlord. Most likely Al Gore, because he invented AGW and has master minded himself being at the head of this one world government.

It reminds us of the drunken sailor whose idea of a good time is staggering from bar to bar picking fights until someone finally kicks the crap outta him, then returns to the ship to brag about what a great time he had. Except in windy’s case, never making it past the first bar.

Michael Medved does a poor job of reigning in Meyer but unwittingly allows Meyer to pwn himself by citing the Oregon Petition as evidence that the scientific consensus has shifted away from realising that AGW is a reality and dangerous.

The GOP is still trying to dismantle social secuirty and medicare-let alone the AHA of 2010.

Should any of us expect them to acknowledge climate change, that would regulate coal and oil companies? And might bring regulation to other parts of the economy>? The GOP is digging themselves into a political wilderness that will last far longer then the one they suffered in the past. What we will be facing this century in large part to them is unimaginable.

“The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants as early as Tuesday, according to several people briefed on the proposal. The move could end the construction of new conventional coal-fired facilities in the United States.

The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.

The proposal does not cover existing plants, although utility companies have announced that they plan to shut down more than 300 boilers, representing more than 42 gigawatts of electricity generation — nearly 13 percent of the nation’s coal-fired electricity — rather than upgrade them with pollution-control technology.”

And to think that under Kyoto they would have been paid to reduce carbon emissions by any means of their choosing. Under cap & trade they could have greater flexibility than under these upcoming regulations. At one time, not long ,ago, these were considered acceptable in Republican circles as market oriented solutions!

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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